


Something to Hope for

by ArianneMaya



Series: Aftermath [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friendship, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 19:49:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2480348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArianneMaya/pseuds/ArianneMaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"The man you're looking for died seventy years ago." Bucky looks at the horizon again, and his voice drops to barely above a whisper. "I can't be him." </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something to Hope for

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the long delay. Hopefully the next part won't take as long for me to get it done.  
> Many thanks to Eeyore9990 for the beta. Any remaining mistakes are mine.

The sun is already rising when Sam and Steve arrive in Charlotte. They're about to head to the motel Natasha told them about when Sam's phone buzzes with two new texts that say, respectively, _He's gone_ and _Meet me for breakfast?_ with an address. 

"What is it?" Steve asks, his eyes still on the road. 

"Natasha. Says he's gone and asking if we're joining her for breakfast." It's a good idea, especially since they drove all night and both need to release the tension just a bit, but so close to a lead, Sam isn't sure he could get Steve to agree with him.

So he waits in silence while Steve hesitates until his stomach seems to decide for him, emitting a loud noise of hunger. Sam can't help but laugh and a smile turns up the corners of Steve's mouth. 

"Okay," Sam says when he finally stops laughing. "Breakfast it is, then. This way." 

They find Natasha in a small deli, at a table as far away from the doors and windows as it can be. Somehow, it makes Sam feel better to know he isn't the only one falling into old patterns. There's something a bit unhealthy about the way he can't help checking and double checking and triple checking the lock at night or need to know where all the entrances and exits are before he feels comfortable somewhere, but he's almost certain that Natasha would tell him that, with the way things are right now and the number of enemies they've made already, it's survival instinct talking more than just his PTSD acting up. 

The table is covered with enough food for a small army – or one very hungry super-soldier – along with three huge cups of coffees. 

"It's about time you two got here. I think the waitress was doubting my capacity to eat all this food by myself," Natasha says as they sit, hiding a smile behind her cup of coffee. 

Sam grabs his cup of coffee, takes a small sip and finally feels like he can relax. "You're so tiny, she had to wonder where you'd put it." 

Natasha tilts her head like she's conceding he has a point. Next to them, Steve hasn't touched his coffee or his food, too busy staring at Natasha. "Are you okay?" 

She nods then rolls her eyes at his dubious look. "I'm fine. I wouldn't lie about that, Steve. I don't even have a scratch." 

It's obviously isn't enough for Steve. "What happened?"

She takes another sip of coffee. "He was following me." Worry has to show on both their faces. She raises a hand to interrupt before either of them can say anything. "As I said, I'm fine. All he wanted was help to get rid of the trackers in his body, so HYDRA couldn't find him again."

Steve is almost smiling, and Sam gets where he's coming from, because that definitely is progress, but it feels like there's something Natasha isn't saying. "Why did he come to you?"

For a second, she looks like he just caught her in a lie, but the next moment, her face is carefully bland again. "I..." She sighs. "This is so not what I was planning to tell you." 

"What are you talking about?" Steve asks, all his attention on her. 

She looks away for a second before she says, "Okay, look. Only reason why I didn't tell you before is because I didn't remember it before he reminded me." She takes a deep breath. "There are a lot of things about my childhood that I don't remember so well. I'm not sure if it's because my handlers only wanted me to remember certain things, or if it was just all so traumatic that my mind chose to make me forget. But the result is the same. Memories trickle back in when something triggers them. So last time we spoke about the Winter Soldier, I really didn't know." 

"Whatever it is, just say it."

Gently, Sam rests a hand on Steve's thigh and squeezes, feeling a bit of the tension seep out of him. He has a feeling that Steve's going to need it; he's a hair-trigger away from blowing up. 

"In the eighties," Natasha explains, very slowly, "HYDRA loaned the Winter Soldier to a para-governmental Soviet organization called the Red Room. They were specialized in training kids from very early childhood as spies and assassins. They wanted the best to teach their latest batch of kids to kill. And the best meant the Winter Soldier." She takes another pause, looks down at the table. "When you were a girl climbing the ranks in the Red Room, the highest title you could aspire to was the Black Widow." 

Steve seems too stunned to say anything. 

"So that's why he came to you." Sam frowns a little. Putting all the puzzle pieces together is getting harder with every day that passes. "Because he remembered you." 

"Yes, in part." Natasha seems to hesitate again before she says, "And because he said he trusted me to put him down if I needed to." She shakes her head. "He was a lot more coherent than I was expecting him to be."

"So you two knew each other." Of course, that's what Steve would stick on. 

"If you want to call it that," Natasha says, looking at him in the eyes. "He was part of my training. I had no idea who he was. I didn't remember him until he reminded me. I wouldn't have lied to you." At Steve's dubious smile, she adds, "Not like that." 

That seems to be enough for Steve. "How was he?" 

There's a small silence as Natasha stares at her cup of coffee. "Good," she finally says. "Better than I thought he would be. Coherent, sure of himself. He knew what he was doing. But it's not that surprising, considering."

This time, it's Sam who asks, "Considering what?"

"Remember what you said about how he might have been given a knock-off version of your serum, during the war?” Steve nods. “You were right. His brain is probably already healing itself."

"Why do you say that like it's a bad thing?" Steve asks, and Sam realizes how much Natasha is letting through to them. He has no doubt that before everything, neither of them would have had such an easy time reading her. 

Or maybe she's letting through only what she thinks is necessary. With her, it's a little bit hard to know for sure. 

"Because it means that he also remembers a lot of what happened with HYDRA, of the things they made him do. He told me he doesn't remember a thing when he gets a bad day." She shakes her head. "Do I really need to tell you how bad that is?"

In other words, what Sam had suspected from the start is turning out to be true. No matter how much this feels like a wild goose chase, finding Bucky might actually be the easy part. 

Steve hangs his head. "No. You don't." He sighs. "He could have just read the file, though." He doesn't sound like he really believes, more like he needed to say it. 

That might be why Natasha's voice is still carefully controlled when she says, "Steve. HYDRA loaning him out wasn't in the file. You know that. And since I spent a lot of the time you were in the hospital translating it from Russian to English for you, I know that, too. The only other way for him to have found that out requires a type of clearance that I'm almost certain he doesn't have and that I'm not sure he could figure out. And even then? That wouldn't have been enough to make him remember me." 

"You don't know that. You're pretty unforgettable."

She huffs. "For God's sake, Rogers, I was a kid! In order to connect the dots, he would have needed access to my Red Room file. SHIELD never had all the details. No matter how well he's doing, that's not a thing he was taught to do. He was an assassin, not a spy." 

"I'm sorry, I... I'm sorry." Steve looks down at the table, his hands searching for Sam's, still resting on his thigh. "It's just... I want to help him and I have no idea where to start." 

Natasha reaches for his hand across the table. "Start by accepting that the last seventy years and everything he did isn't going to disappear just because you wish it didn't happen."

Steve shakes his head, but Sam says, "She's right, you know. Most likely scenario, he's gonna have seventy years worth of PTSD, plus what he didn't deal with during the war." Steve looks hurt, and it might be a cheap shot, because it's Steve who told Sam that Bucky lied, after Steve rescued him, about how well he was doing: there was no way he was letting himself be sent back home while Steve stayed there. But he chooses to ignore it, and he continues, "The person we find may not have much in common with the friend you remember."

"I know that!" Steve sounds frustrated. It's a conversation they've had, again and again. Steve knows that, in a distant way, but Sam's very aware that there's a difference between knowing something, intellectually, and being faced with the truth. There are things you're never prepared for, no matter how hard you try. 

"When he left," Natasha adds in a soft voice, "He said that the man you're looking for died seventy years ago. I have a feeling he might not be completely wrong."

Steve sobers at that. "Doesn't really matter for now, does it? It's not like we have a trail."

"Depends on how fast he ditches the car he was driving," Natasha says, grabbing her phone. 

"Huh?" They're both staring at her, completely lost. Seconds later, Sam feels his phone buzz in his pocket. He lets out a low whistle when he sees Natasha's text. There's everything they might need to know about the car: brand, year, color, and of course, the license plate number. "Impressive."

"And that," Natasha says with a smile, "is why underestimating me is always a bad idea." 

Steve's smile goes all soft. "Like I didn't already know that."

After one final squeeze of both Natasha's and Sam's hands, he pulls his plate closer and starts eating. Sam releases him and makes a move for his own plate. He has a feeling the next couple of days won't be easy. 

Before Natasha starts eating, she adds, "You do know that he might not be ready to accept your help, right?" 

Steve stops with food halfway to his mouth. "Yeah, I know. But I need to try." 

They eat in silence for a couple of minutes before Sam turns the tables on her. "And what about you? How are things going?"

She shrugs. "I'm taking a small vacation in South America." She doesn't say where, and Sam has a feeling that she won't.

"Did you find him?" Steve asks.

"I'm hoping that I will." For a second, it looks like she's fighting herself to keep her expression neutral. "I'll call you as soon as I know what I'm facing." 

Sam releases a breath he had no idea he was holding in. He's starting to realize that Nat is just as likely as Steve to take on suicide missions; she just won't admit that it's what they are. And while he knows that she doesn't need anyone to protect her, he really wants to help. And he's sure Steve would say the same thing.

While they eat, she gives them the rest of the details of her conversation with Barnes, tells Steve again that yes, he looked much better than what she would have expected: clean, well-fed, "pretty respectable looking, if you forget how much he'd need a haircut." They finish their breakfast and they say goodbye again. Steve steps away to call Hill and see if she can help with this new little bit of intel. 

Unsurprisingly, Barnes is already out of the city, but it doesn't look like he's ditched the car yet, so they set out on his trail. Even more surprising, everywhere the car is spotted, there are also reports of a man with a metal arm; Barnes never gets into trouble, but he somehow always makes sure to be seen. Almost, Sam thinks, like he wants to be found. 

In the end, finding Barnes is ridiculously easy. For the next week and a half, they follow him all the way to Arizona, and even though he isn't seen again once he crosses the state's border, Steve gets this strange little smile on his face when he says, "I know where he is." 

They don't find him right away, but the car is exactly where Steve was expecting, at a small motel close to the Grand Canyon. 

That night, when they're cuddling in bed, about to fall asleep, Sam asks, "Why the Grand Canyon?" 

It takes Steve so long to answer that Sam almost expects him not to. And then, just when he's ready to let things drop, Steve rolls onto his back to look at Sam and says, "We kept talking about it. During the worst of the war, when we weren't sure if we would make it back home, late at night, we'd tell each other what we wanted to do, or see, once we were home. You know how it is." 

"Yeah, I know." He really means it, and it has to show, because Steve arches an eyebrow at him, waiting until Sam explains, "There's this attraction park, in Ohio. It's called Cedar Point. Me and Riley meant to go there and ride all their roller coasters after our second tour. It never happened, but because we'd promised each other that we'd go even if we had to go alone, well. I've been going there once a year since then." 

It's easy to talk about this now. Sam is so far from the time when it felt like grief was going to eat him up alive. Yet he's glad for the way Steve's hand finds his and offers a gentle squeeze. He clings to Steve and says, "So. Grand Canyon?"

"Bucky kept talking about it, saying that he wanted to see it. So I couldn't imagine him going through Arizona without going there." 

There's so much hope in Steve's voice that for once, Sam refuses to crush it, even though he's aware this is one of the myriad of ways in which Steve, no matter what he keeps saying about the way the war changed him, too, is still hoping to find his best friend intact. 

Instead, he wraps himself around Steve and holds him close, without saying a word. He feels like there's nothing left for him to say. Everything they think they know is speculation, at least until they've seen for themselves how Barnes is doing. 

It happens the very next day. They join a group hiking to the top of the canyon, and it's only when everyone is busy admiring the view and taking pictures that Sam notices Barnes, just far enough that it's clear he was following their group, but didn't exactly join them. 

Sam knocks his elbow with Steve's and indicates Barnes' direction with his head. Steve's eyes go wide – he has to think the same thing as Sam, that it's too easy – but Barnes doesn't move, almost like he's waiting for them. 

***

Steve raises his hand, stopping Sam in his tracks. As grateful as he is for Sam to always have his back, this is something he needs to do on his own. Instead of the questions Steve's expecting, though, Sam only gives a small nod, like he gets it without needing to hear it aloud.

Steve moves away from the crowd and follows Bucky, as far as necessary to make sure their conversation won't carry over to the rest of the group. Bucky waits, staring at the horizon while Steve walks up to him, and then he says, "Stop following me. I'm not gonna kill anyone."

Just as Natasha said, Bucky sounds coherent, sure of himself. Still, the accusation hurts. 

"I didn't think you would. That's not why we're following you." 

Bucky turns his head toward him, just a little, and arches an eyebrow, waiting. In that moment, Bucky looks so much like the friend Steve remembers that it breaks his heart. 

"I..." Every word seems to desert Steve, and he says, "I just want to help." 

"You can't." 

It feels like a door closed in Steve's face, so eerily similar to every time he was told that he couldn't do something because he was too small, too inadequate. 

He wants to argue, the same way he did back then, but before he can say anything, Bucky continues, "The man you're looking for died seventy years ago." He looks at the horizon again, and his voice drops to barely above a whisper. "I can't be him." 

You can, Steve wants to say, if only for the little moments when Bucky sounds so much like the man who always stood by Steve. But he doesn't have a chance to say it.

"I don't want to be."

It hurts, more than anything Steve could have imagined. No matter how many times he's told Sam that he knew Bucky wouldn't be the same person, that the friend he remembers was lost in the war and that he was ready to discover whomever he'd become, it feels like the last remnants of a life Steve remembers like it was yesterday being blown to the wind. 

It's a pain deep inside him, not unlike the day when he learned that Peggy was still alive and, for the first time, heard the word 'Alzheimer's'. 

He has no idea what to say. He's imagined this moment going a myriad of ways and honestly thought he was ready. 

He knows, now, that he really wasn't. 

"The man I'm looking for looked after me my whole life. He was always there when I needed someone. I'm just trying to do the same thing." He looks down at the ground. "If you'll let me." 

"Do you remember when we were young, how you hated it when either me or your 'ma tried to do something for you?"

Steve looks up, eyes wide with surprise. This is the kind of thing he was expecting Bucky not to remember. He has no way to guess what's going on in Bucky's head since Bucky isn't looking at him, but he's obviously waiting for an answer.

"Yeah, I remember." 

"You were so frail and small and your body didn't do what you wanted it to half the time. It felt like you were getting everything done through sheer force of will. But unless you were sick, feverish and stuck in bed, I knew better than to think you couldn't do something and try to do it for you. Took me a long time to learn, but I did." 

Even if he wanted, Steve can't say anything. Some days, the body the serum gave him still feels like it isn't real, like he'll go back to being that little guy who could barely stand on his legs. He remembers that life as being his. This one still feels like a dream. 

"It's the same thing for me now," Bucky continues, his voice so soft, like he's trying his best not to hurt Steve but needs to say it anyway. "I have memories that don't always feel like they're mine, and very clear memories of doing horrible things, even to people that I cared about, long ago." His shoulders slump. "I'm not just talking about you. I killed Howard, too. He was your friend, and our teammate, in a way, and I killed him. And the worst part is..." He trails off, before he seems to gather his courage again. "He saw my face before he died. He saw my face and he knew it was me."

"It wasn't you," Steve tries to say, all the conviction of the world in his voice. 

Yet Bucky shakes his head. "It was me. Not willingly, not by my own choice, but it was still me who pulled the trigger. Every. Single. Time." 

"Bucky—"

Bucky interrupts him before he can say anything. "Don't call me that. Bucky Barnes was an honorable man. I am not." 

Steve blinks once, and again, to try to stop his tears from falling. 

"I know you only want to help. But you can't. Not yet. Everything I've done is part of me. I have no idea who I am anymore. But how can I hope to figure it out if I'm with you, trying to be the man you remember me as?" 

And Steve gets it. It's impossible for him not to. He's had a hard enough time trying to figure out his own life, trying to carve himself a place into this future that he had such a hard time understanding, in big part because, when he woke up, the war was yesterday. Figuring himself out, somewhere between the person he knows he is and the persona of Captain America, the legend that everybody learned about in school but that has very little to do with Steve himself, was never easy. He can't even imagine how it would have been in Bucky's situation, but he remembers how hard a time he had accepting help, no matter how good the intentions of the person offering it. 

He understands all too well that this is something Bucky has to do on his own terms, in the same way it once was Bucky's choice to follow Steve into the jaws of hell and back, even though he could have gone home if he wanted to. 

So when Bucky says, again, "Stop following me," no matter how much it hurts, Steve can't do anything but nod. 

It feels like his heart is torn to pieces when he watches Bucky walk away. This is the last thing he wants, but he has to admit that he can't recognize the man in front of him. He has Bucky's face, and sometimes sounds so much like Bucky that it rips Steve apart to hear him talk, but Steve doesn't _know_ him. Not in the way that he knew the man he grew up with, the friend who was always by his side. 

Maybe what he's mourning is what feels like the last tether still tying him to his past, to the life he remembers living as if it was yesterday. 

"You know," and he isn't trying to stop Bucky, not really – he respects him enough to respect his decisions, and somewhere, in the back of his mind, he hears the words Peggy once said to him, "whenever you're ready... I'll be waiting for you." 

It's the only thing he can do: make it clear that the door is open, that it will stay open no matter how long it takes for Bucky to pull himself together. 

The words are somehow enough to stop Bucky in his tracks, to have him look at Steve over his shoulder with a half-smile. "You never know when to quit, eh, Stevie?" 

He sounds so much like _Bucky_ that it takes everything Steve has not to beg him to stay. Instead, he forces himself to remember that Bucky spent the last seventy years obeying somebody else's orders, unable to decide for himself, that this is Bucky's choice and that, no matter how hard it is for Steve to accept it, no matter that it feels like he's losing his best friend all over again, he has to respect it. 

Still, he knows they understood each other when Bucky adds, "I'll remember that."

Just like that, he's gone, his words echoing in the low buzz of tourist voices. It isn't quite a promise, but it feels like one. 

And it's enough to give Steve hope.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want, you can find me on [tumblr](ariannemaya.tumblr.com)


End file.
